Modular, highly interconnected computer network systems offer the ability to exchange data among individual nodes in the network and to share hardware resources. Many networks move large amounts of data and many messages between the nodes on the network. Due to the large amounts of data movement in such a system, communication traffic among the nodes can become congested. Messages and data are sent in self-contained packets which have the needed address, command and data. Packets can be sent from a source to a target through several intermediate nodes. This saves time and congestion since the processors do not wait for each message to travel the length of the network before sending the next packet.
There are still problems associated with messages sent from a source to a target in a network computer system. One of the problems is that latency or time delays can be caused in central processing units which are either the source or target for multiple messages. Currently, as each message packet is received, it produces an interrupt. The central processing unit must respond to each interrupt before the next message can be received. This is not a problem in many computer systems. However, in network-based systems, multiple messages may have to be received by a central processing unit at any given time. Multiple messages produce multiple interrupts. In the instance when multiple messages arrive at a central processing unit at about the same time, the CPU is only capable of handling the messages serially and must respond to an interrupt for a first message and service the interrupt before the next message interrupt can be responded to and serviced. When multiple messages arrive at a CPU, the CPU may spend an inordinate amount of time processing the various interrupts associated with the messages. This problem is exacerbated in a network-based system where it is more common for a particular CPU to have to process multiple messages. When a CPU or central processing unit has to service a number of messages, many times latency can be introduced into the particular computer system. In other words, the CPU which has to service multiple messages is spending more time servicing interrupts associated with the multiple messages than doing other operations. The other operations can be delayed as a result, and this is referred to as latency due to system overhead and results in an increased response time of a particular central processing unit. There is a need for a central processing unit for use in a network system that can efficiently receive and handle multiple messages. There is also a need for a CPU that can handle multiple messages in a stream and which can handle multiple messages with one pass through its operating system. There is also a need for a system or CPU which can handle multiple messages with one interrupt. Such a system could check to see if additional messages have arrived while a first interrupt for a message is being processed. There is also a need for a CPU that spends less time servicing multiple interrupts from multiple messages and spends more of its time on other jobs. There is also a need for a computer system that has a reduced set of instructions for dealing with the receipt of packets or messages from a network. There is also a need for a more efficient way to send messages to a target client computer on a network and to receive messages or packets from the network. Such a system would handle messages more effectively which would produce a network having increased speed and lower overhead in terms of an instruction set and clock cycles being used.